A Crooked Kind of Perfect

A few days ago we finished our latest Family Book Club book.  We read A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban which is about a girl who wants to be a piano prodigy and play at Carnegie Hall. But when her dad goes to buy her a piano he comes back with a "wheeze bag organ" instead.  It's a cute story about friendship, not giving up, and doing your best.  We all really liked it.  For book club we discussed the book, watched Youtube videos of a famous pianist (Vladamir Horowitz) who is mentioned throughout the book, and watched a video of Neil Diamond singing Forever in Blue Jeans which is also a prominent theme throughout the book. 

We had a dinner consisting of foods mentioned in the book. We ate Bust-a-Burgers (a.k.a. Wendy's dollar menu burgers) and Ginger Ale (the drink required to have on hand when the music teacher Ms. Person came to do her lessons) and homemade pumpkin butterscotch cookies (they talk about cookies a lot in the book....it made me hungry every time we read!)

We also sent an email to the author, Linda Urban. I really didn't expect to receive a response but she actually wrote back to us. I haven't shown it to the kids yet but I think they will think it's really cool!  Here is what we wrote to her and and her response.

 Dear Ms. Urban,
We have a family book club. We chose your book A Crooked Kind of Perfect for our selection this time. Tonight we are having our book club discussion. We ate Bust-a-Burgers (a.k.a. Wendy's) with Ginger Ale and homemade cookies for dessert. We watched Youtube videos of Horowitz and Forever in Blue Jeans. We also talked about what we learned from the book. Garrett liked when Zoe got her new piano. Lexi learned that true friends are like Wheeler and not Emma. Drake learned the meaning of the word "smitten." Zac learned to never give up and to not quit his piano lessons. 

Thank you for writing such a great book. We really enjoyed reading it as a family. 
 Keep on writing!
Sincerely,The Chappells 
Lexi (age 11), Zac (age 9), Garrett (age 7), Drake (age 7) and mom and dad (Amber and Tyson....ages not necessary!)

Dear Chappell Family:
You are awesome.  I am smitten with the idea of a family book club and I adore all the things you did to explore A Crooked Kind of Perfect.  Horowitz is amazing, huh?  And Wendy's isn't too bad, either.  (I am partial to the Frosty, but only seem to get one every few years.)
Thank you for choosing my book to read and for sharing it together in this way.  Thanks for telling me about it, too.  You made my day!
Linda


Now we're moving on to reading some poetry books by Shel Silverstein until after Christmas. We've never read poetry together so I thought we'd better keep it pretty lighthearted and silly. So far Silverstein meets that criteria!